The Taipei Metro is one of the major transportation systems in the Taipei area. Noticeable noise and vibration caught attention during the train turning on a rail with a large angle. The initial investigation indicates the noise occurs between the slewing ring bearing and the friction sets which are located between the body and chassis systems. A study was conducted to identify the root causes. A lab test to duplicate the reported problem observed on the train was established, and a set of experiments were performed in the lab to identify the root causes. Under certain contact conditions, unsmooth turning would occur and cause the noise and vibration. To further identify and understand the root causes. An ADAMS multibody dynamic model which included the slew bearing and friction set was build to perform the train turn motion, and to verify the lab test. Different friction materials were also included in the simulation.

In general, the ride and handling characteristics of a vehicle are strongly dependent on chassis parameters that come from the kinematic and compliance properties of a suspension system. For ride comfort improvement of a compact SUV with increasing handling performance simultaneously, this research proposes a new quantitative approach by considering various driving maneuvers and road surfaces. Particularly, five different road surfaces were used for ride comfort analysis, and this analysis was performed for two different vehicle speeds on a cleat road profile and three different vehicle speeds on a rough road profile. The contribution analysis of a suspension and a seat structure to ride comfort was investigated in order to decide an optimal structural combination. It was shown that contribution of each factor is different according to road profiles and driving conditions respectively.

Road crashes deserve to be a strategic issue for any country's public health and can lead to overall growth crisis, if not addressed properly. More than 90% of deaths on the world's roads occur in low and middle-income countries (21.5 and 19.5 per lakh of population, respectively) though they have just 48% of all registered vehicles. It is estimated that road traffic deaths will increase worldwide, from 0.99 million in 1990 to 2.34 million in 2020 (representing 3.4% of all deaths). India already accounts for about 9.5% of the total 1.2 million fatal accidents in the world. In 2007, 1.14 lakh people in India lost their lives in road mishaps-that's significantly higher than the 2006 road death figures in China, 89,455. One person dies at every 4.61 minutes in India for road crashes. Road deaths in India registered a sharp 6.1% rise between 2006 and 2007. The Planning Commission of India had assessed the social cost at 55,000 crore ( 550 billion) on account of road accidents in India.

For assessment of the aircrafts noise impact on the community near to airports the acoustic calculations and measurements may be used. Obtained measurements results show ~1 dBA for LAeq coincidence with calculations results and allow to prepare correct database for practical use under ECAC method. While results of LAmax estimation still remain under investigation. These requirements are important first of all for aircraft, which are designed in FSU, Russian Federation and Ukraine. Their contribution to the aircraft noise impact in airports of FSU countries is still dominant, so their correct input data is still necessary.

The objective of this paper is to present a method of determination of airport noise levels and environment noise using computer simulation, thus reducing the need for physical measurements in the areas affected by airport noise. Through the simulations, the hourly airport noise was characterized for a wide range of critical receivers. Levels for airport and environment noise had been calculated, considering that environment noise is generated mostly by the flow of motor vehicles on the nearby roads. From the results of these simulations it was possible to choose points where continuous noise measurements are made. Using the simulated values, we hope to determine a safe and precise way of predicting the noise generated from airports throughout the country minimizing the needs of conducting physical measurements to obtain the noise curves.

The X-NOISE Coordination Action, through its network structure and comprehensive workplan involving expert groups, scientific workshops, stakeholder seminars and a common information system, addresses the aircraft noise challenges set by the ACARE 2020 Vision. To this end, X-Noise undertakes the elaboration and coordination of research strategies, the dissemination of results and the integration of European research activities in the field of air transport related to noise. Over 4 years, the project has involved strong participation from European Union-based organizations as well as significant contribution from international partners, combining the complementary skills and expertise of industry, SMEs, universities and research establishments to cover the whole field of interest.

This paper is assessing two methods that can be used in assessing the airport noise capacity when new operational practices are implemented at a certain airport. The example given is CDA-continuous descent approach implemented at Bucharest Henri Coanda International airport in Romania. A review of the main operational practices related to CDO (Continuous Descent Operations) with relevance for noise and emissions reduction, shows the importance of working in a team when implementing new operational practices, as well as the need to access data either through FDR (flight data recorder) or from measurements. - The example selected explains the difficulties one can have to extract FDR data. Although the authors of this paper benefitted from FDR from TAROM, the Romanian national airline, it was difficult to be extracted, so the assessment of the airport noise capacity focused on monitoring and measurements undertaken under the flight path.

With the growth of urban areas, the areas adjacent to airports are becoming densely inhabited, causing a big problem known as encroachment. The encroachment occurs when a significant portion of the population is submitted to the adverse effects of noise, even outside the areas of restricted use established by the airport zoning. The metric used for the airport zoning in many countries and in Brazil is the DNL (Day Night Level). This metric is associated to the average sound energy produced by all aeronautical events during a period of 24 hours, with weighting of 10 dB(A) during the night. However, the use of DNL for airport zoning can lead to different results for noise levels, daytime and nighttime, depending on the seasonality of airport activity in those periods. The paper proposes a study of alternatives for the airport zoning based on the Brazilian Standard ABNT/NBR 10151.

This paper develops a novel integrated navigational system for autonomous vehicle motion control. Vehicle control is defined in terms of the required vehicle steering angle, rate of steering change and speed. This paper proposes predictive control in the image plane. The proposed predictive control enables the navigation on the desired path, reduces the control complexity and increases the application space for multiple types of vehicles. The paper investigates vehicle control stability; especially in scenarios containing varying curvature turns and variable vehicle speeds. The primary emphasis of this paper is on vehicle control rather than scene analysis. To demonstrate the proposed vehicle control, a computer vision based multi-lane detection algorithm is introduced. The control strategy is applied such that the vehicle maintains position within the lane boundaries. Stability of the control algorithm is tested and demonstrated in multiple scenarios using 3-D simulation results.

In an environment of tougher engineering constraints to deliver tomorrow's aerodynamic vehicles, evaluation of aerodynamics early in the design process using digital prototypes and simulation tools has become more crucial for meeting cost and performance targets. Engineering needs have increased the demands on simulation software to provide robust solutions under a range of operating conditions and with detailed geometry representation. In this paper the application of simulation tools to wheel design in on-road operating conditions is explored. Typically, wheel and wheel cover design is investigated using physical tests very late in the development process, and requires costly testing of many sets of wheels in an on-road testing environment (either coast-down testing or a moving-ground wind-tunnel).

It has been observed that locked-wheel skidding friction values are essentially vehicle- and tire-independent. It has been tacitly assumed by most crash reconstructionists that any ABS-equipped vehicle would also decelerate at nearly the same rate as any other ABS-equipped vehicle. This paper will review literature with relevant straight-line test results on paved roadways and gravel, and present additional results from recent tests generated with four modern vehicles built by three manufacturers. Results from the recent testing showed that locked-wheel skidding values on a concrete roadway were similar for all four vehicles, but the ABS-improvement on the same roadway varied. On gravel, ABS was always less effective than locked-wheel skidding. ABS and locked-wheel results on gravel had less car-to-car variation than tests conducted on concrete.

{Next-generation network enabled (eEnabled) airplanes will digitally communicate with ground systems continuously at airport, for collection, distribution and loading of airplane data and software parts. Wireless technologies further bring the opportunity of pervasive connection with eEnabled airplane anywhere at airports. However, safety critical airplane information assets mandate secure solutions for eEnabled airplane applications. In this paper, we address the issue of securing wireless eEnabled airplane applications at airports for reliable and safe airplane operation. We identify the special challenges and present research results by comparing the state-of-the-art technologies and proposing the strategy of “defense in depth.”}

The air traffic demand on the US national airspace frequently exceeds its available capacity. In current operations, the Air Traffic Service Provider designs and implements air traffic management initiatives with minimal interaction with the airlines. NASA and its partners have developed a new collaborative air traffic flow management concept of operations that involves the users of the airspace to a greater degree. In this paper, we describe an agent-based simulation of the new concept of operations and our planned experimentation to determine if the new concept of operations will lead to better utilization of the national airspace.

Biodistillate transportation fuels include biodiesel (produced via transesterification of animal fats and vegetable oils) and renewable diesel (produced via catalytic hydroprocessing of the same feedstocks). Production and use of biodistillates are increasing dramatically, both in the U.S. and globally. This paper describes the policy drivers prompting growth of biodistillate fuels in the U.S., Europe, and selected other countries. Trends in fuel production volumes and feedstocks supplies are presented for these fuels. Current feedstocks are dominated by soybean oil in the U.S. and rapeseed oil in Europe. However, there is much interest in developing alternative, non-edible feedstocks such as jatropha and microalgae. Currently, biodiesel is the dominant biodistillate in use, though interest in renewable diesel is increasing. This paper describes different conversion processes used to manufacture these fuels, and discusses the pros and cons of each.

The cargo transportation in Brazil is predominantly done by road, instead of any other means of transportation. It represented more than 35% of the total amount of money spent on goods transportation on that South American country during 2005. Several factors should be taken in consideration in the final cost of this service. We can highlight, for example: poor road quality, cargo robbery, theft of tires, fuel stealing, road accidents, etc. These costs are always reassigned to the final customers. Among that list, one of main factors for increasing transport costs in Brazil is the illicit fuel deviation. In order to reduce this problem, entrepreneurs have adopted several strategies; so far, none of them could come up with an efficient proposal. This paper presents a new tool to assist preventing the fuel stealing issue. It can detect the tank violation, notifying the company when it happened and how much fuel was diverted.

There is a growing interest in using a standard reference tire for both assessing changes in test track pavement over time and rank ordering of the performance of different highway pavements. Because of longer-term availability, the ASTM Standard Reference Test Tire (SRTT) is the primary candidate for these applications. Issues of concern for the SRTT include tire-to-tire variation, the relation of the SRTT to other tires currently in use, and the “break-in” period required for stable test tires. To address tire-to-tire variability, seven SRTT’s were tested on variety of asphalt concrete (AC) and Portland cement concrete (PCC) surfaces on two occasions. These included five new tires and two that had been in use for some time. Two of the new tires were re-tested with increasing use to examine any break-in period effect.

By adapting vehicle control systems to the skill level of the driver, the overall vehicle active safety provided to the driver can be further enhanced for the existing active vehicle controls, such as ABS, Traction Control, Vehicle Stability Enhancement Systems. As a follow-up to the feasibility study in [1], this paper provides some recent results on data-driven driving skill characterization. In particular, the paper presents an enhancement of discriminant features, the comparison of three different learning algorithms for recognizer design, and the performance enhancement with decision fusion. The paper concludes with the discussions of the experimental results and some of the future work.

This paper uses data from a GPS/INS integrated device to investigate the feasibility of estimating vehicle states using a consumer grade GPS and INS. The GPS data is sampled at 1Hz to represent a consumer grade GPS. This data is then fused with INS data in a dual Kinematic Kalman Filter (KKF). The first KKF (yaw KKF) predicts heading angle, bias in gyroscope and sideslip angle. The second KKF (velocity KKF) predicts longitudinal and lateral velocities as well as the accelerometer biases. Due to the multirate sampling, discontinuities in the estimated states occur, hence, a line interpolation algorithm of two different orders (i.e. linear and quadratic) are implemented into the KKF. Results show that the algorithm is able to reduce the discontinuities in the velocity predictions but with an increase in error when the sideslip saturates.

There are more and more systems emerging making use of measurements from a forward looking radar and a forward looking camera. It is by now well known how to exploit this data in order to compute estimates of the road geometry, tracking leading vehicles, etc. However, there is valuable information present in the radar concerning stationary objects, that is typically not used. The present work shows how radar measurements of stationary objects can be used to obtain a reliable estimate of the free space in front of a moving vehicle. The approach has been evaluated on real data from highways and rural roads in Sweden.

A practical and low cost Blind Spot Monitoring system is proposed. By using a single camera, the range and azimuth position of a vehicle in a blind spot are measured. The algorithm is based on the proposed RWA (Range Window Algorithm). The camera is installed on the door mirror and monitoring the side and rear of the host vehicle. The algorithm processes the image and identifies range and azimuth angle of the vehicle in the adjacent lane. This algorithm is applied to real situations. The 388 images including several kinds of vehicles are analyzed. The detection rate is 86% and the range accuracy is 1.6[m]. The maximum detection range is about 30[m].

An active torque control steering system is developed and implemented in a car simulator. The simulator has a comprehensive and accurate full vehicle dynamics and road/environment models. A simple model of the driving simulator’s vehicle was developed and a PID controller, which uses the vehicle’s yaw angle, and position, was designed to control vehicle steering torque. The controller is then integrated with the driving simulator program, emulating the real world conditions. The developed system was tested in various obstacle avoidance and lane change scenarios in the car simulator, and the vehicle was able to avoid the stationary obstacles autonomously.

This paper compares the follower profiles of transportation industry personnel with other industry groups, principally engineers and DOD personnel. In compiling the comparison, Chaleff’s courageous follower behaviors are used to identify the profiles and identify similarities and diversities. In addition, the paper reports on comparative analysis for follower behaviors, locus of control and the Big Five personality factors from a pilot study.

Car navigation systems are evolving to support a host of new functions, including vehicle location and navigation capabilities, and are fast becoming the brain of the car, where entertainment, safety and autonomous driving converge. Increased functionalities require higher- performance processors—and studies have shown that as operating frequency increases to provide higher performance, power consumption drastically increases. Further, as semiconductor technologies move to smaller process nodes to achieve higher performance, operating and leakage power also increase due to the low voltage-threshold (VT) transistors and high operating voltages. As a result, the need for thermal dissipation becomes a bottleneck in high-frequency silicon designs. To support the requirements of these emerging navigational hubs, OEMs are requiring electronic components that offer greater functionality while consuming little power.

In this paper, we present the integration of C2C communication into IAV. Traditional IAV detects target vehicles only they are in visible area; however this integration makes IAV to sense target vehicles even they are blocked by obstacles. In this system, C2C ECU keeps monitoring the target vehicles on the road and sends a warning to IAV controller when it detects any event or risky situation. Finally IAV avoids the collision with the target vehicle by reducing the moving speed or generating a new path.

Natural speech contains a wide variety of expressions, making it much more difficult to recognize than specified verbal commands. We have developed a method using a language model template to generate language models capable of recognizing manifold expressions. This template method is designed on the basis of the modification structure of keywords. The evaluation results for a language model generated with this method showed that it allowed 630,000 command patterns with a high recognition rate of 96%. The results also revealed that the processing speed and memory used for speech recognition with this language model were at a practical level.

An innovative program is described to improve emergency vehicle deployment by automatically alerting all other nearby vehicles on the road as to the presence and intention of the emergency vehicle. Since the use of audible sirens has somewhat marked effectiveness nowadays, in selecting the most practical automated method to notify most drivers a review is given of the various data-links that are available today, including plans for new standards. The research presented concludes that use of today’s newer vehicle data-links is currently ineffective due to the fragmentation and, in many cases, low adoption rates, including satellite radio, HD and conventional radio, automatic cruise control radar, and vehicle telematics.

Vehicle lane keeping system is becoming a new research focus of drive assistant system except adaptive cruise control system. As we all known, vehicle lateral dynamics show strong nonlinear and time-varying with the variety of longitudinal velocity, especially tire’s mechanics characteristic will change from linear characteristic under low speed to strong nonlinear under high speed. For this reason, the traditional PID controller and even self-tuning PID controller, which need to know a precise vehicle lateral dynamics model to adjust the control parameter, are too difficult to get enough accuracy and the ideal control quality. Based on neural network’s ability of self-learning, adaptive and approximate to any nonlinear function, an adaptive PID control algorithm with BP neural network self-tuning online was proposed for vehicle lane keeping.

Research of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) is an important issue of intelligent vehicle (IV). As we all known, a real and experienced driver can control vehicle's speed very well under every traffic environment of ACC working. So a direct and feasible way for establishing ACC controller is to build a human-like longitudinal control algorithm with the simulation of driver behavior of speed control. In this paper, a novel fuzzy self-tuning control algorithm of ACC is established and this controller's parameters can be tuned on-line based on the evaluation indexes that can describe how the driver consider the quality of dynamical characteristic of vehicle longitudinal dynamics. With the advantage of the controller's parameter on-line self-tuning, the computational workload from matching design of ACC controller is also efficiently reduced.

Three full-size sedans were towed to highway speeds along a section of a remote rural highway. Upon release, an automated steering controller steered the vehicles through a series of maneuvers intended to result in rollover. Repeated attempts to roll each vehicle were made until rollover resulted. Non-rollover attempts produced cornering tire marks by the out-of-control vehicle. Out of numerous runs, 3 rollover and 2 non-rollover tests were selected for documentation and analysis. One additional steer-induced rollover test is presented that was conducted along a simulated road section at a closed test-track facility. All six tests presented are instrumented real-world type tests that were later reconstructed based upon the data obtained from on-board instrumentation, videotape, survey measurements, and still photographs obtained of each respective test.